In the present collection of articles by Malcolm Parkes two overarching concerns emerge: the palaeography of manuscript books in relation to what Parkes has previously called the 'grammar of legibility'; and the importance of considering the circumstances in which medieval books were produced, copied and read. The individual studies discuss the handwriting of individual scribes, and the evidence script can provide of the circumstances of a book's production, the effect of punctuation and layout of text on the reader's interpretation of a work, and the provision and production of books for communities of readers, both clerical and academic. From a discussion of the scribe of the Hereford Mappa Mundi to a comprehensive study of book provision in the medieval University of Oxford, a wealth of information is conveyed in these articles, now conveniently accessible in one volume, about books and their histories by one of the most knowledgeable of manuscript scholars today.

Essays looking at the process of teaching and learning to write in the middle ages, with evidence drawn from across Europe. The capacity to read and write are different abilities, yet while studies of medieval readers and reading have proliferated in recent years, there has so far been little examination of how people learnt to write in the middle ages- an aspect of literacy which this volume aims to address. The papers published here discuss evidence adduced from the "a sgraffio" writing of Ancient Rome, through the attempts of scribes to model their handwriting after that ofthe master-scribe in a disciplined scriptorium, to the repeated copying of set phrases in a Florentine merchant's day book. They show how a careful study of handwriting witnesses the reception of the twenty-three letter Latin alphabet in different countries of medieval Europe, and its necessary adaptation to represent vernacular sounds. Monastic customaries provide evidence of teaching and learning in early scriptoria, while an investigation of the grammarians is a reminder that for the medieval scholar learning to write did not mean simply mastering the skill of holding a quill and forming one's letters properly, but also mastering a correct understanding of grammar and punctuation. Other essays consider the European reception of the so-called Arabic numbers, provide an edition of a fifteenth-century tract on how to use abbreviations correctly, and illustrate how images of writing on wax tablets and learning in school can throw light on medieval practice. The volume concludes with a paper on the ways in which a sixteenth-century amateur theologican deployed Latin, Greek and Hebrew alphabets. P.R. Robinson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Contributors: Paolo Fioretti, David Ganz, Martin Steinman, Patrizia Carmassi, Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, Annina Seiler, Alessandro Zironi, Jerzy Kaliszuk, Aslaug Ommundsen, Erik Niblaeus, Gudvardur Mar Gunnlaugsson, Cristina Mantegna, Irene Ceccherini, Jesus Alturo, Carmen del Camino Martinez, Maria do Rosario Barbosa Morujao, Charles Burnett, Olaf Pluta, Lucy Freeman Sandler, Alison Stones, Berthold Kress

In the present collection of articles by Malcolm Parkes two overarching concerns emerge: the palaeography of manuscript books in relation to what Parkes has previously called the 'grammar of legibility'; and the importance of considering the circumstances in which medieval books were produced, copied and read. The individual studies discuss the handwriting of individual scribes, and the evidence script can provide of the circumstances of a book's production, the effect of punctuation and layout of text on the reader's interpretation of a work, and the provision and production of books for communities of readers, both clerical and academic. From a discussion of the scribe of the Hereford Mappa Mundi to a comprehensive study of book provision in the medieval University of Oxford, a wealth of information is conveyed in these articles, now conveniently accessible in one volume, about books and their histories by one of the most knowledgeable of manuscript scholars today.